Best Bidding Software For Construction – Get the best construction estimating software for your business. Compare product reviews, price below. Read our buyer’s guide for more help.
Construction estimating software helps general contractors estimate construction costs for a specific project. Estimates are created by calculating labor costs, material costs, subcontractor costs, and equipment costs for the purpose of finding and submitting a bid price for a project.
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Software construction turns into a contract and leads to project management. These construction estimates can be created through various templates preloaded in the software – allowing you to add your company logo, client information, line items of goods and services, and various terms and conditions of the contract.
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Engineers, architects and construction managers use cost estimating software in the construction field for overall bid management but also for any need to create a cost estimate. Apart from job cost estimation, construction estimating software provides payment tracking, report generation and building schedules.
More advanced software options such as Building Information Modeling (BIM software) are also available. This type of solution creates 3D models for planning, designing, constructing and maintaining buildings or infrastructure.
Digital Takeoff allows dimensional information to be extracted from blueprints and converted into a list of materials required and costs associated with those materials.
Why Should Your Business Use Construction Estimating Software? What benefits does estimating software provide your business? Some of the main reasons include:
Construction Bid Management Software
Job cost estimating features collect and analyze cost data to estimate the time, money, materials, and labor required to build a physical structure. Failure to do so may result in financial consequences of cost overruns and failure to complete the project.
Construction estimating software provides standard processes for building cost models to execute job-based work. While commonly used in the construction industry – it can be applied to other industries where work is carried out on a project basis and requires determination of the likely cost of completing the work.
Construction Takeoff refers to functions that allow users to extract material counts and estimates from digital blueprints. Also known as Digital Takeoffs, this feature can scan blueprint file types like SVG, DXF, DWG, and PDF – allowing blueprints to be converted into digital files. Information can then be pulled from digital blueprints to help calculate quantities and measurements.
An efficient estimating program allows you to easily use blueprints to identify project scope. With scope identified, you’ll be able to go back to the parts list and more reliably create data-driven price estimates. The same process works for labor costs. As you break down the work into smaller sub-components, you will be able to plan costs more accurately.
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To determine how an item is quantified, you must perform a simple count, provide exact length requirements, or use area for units (such as concrete) provided in volume. Digital takeoff capabilities manage these complex equations to arrive at the exact proportions required.
A what-if scenario is a hypothesis about how a particular job or project might be performed. As for construction estimation, it will help you better prepare yourself for the best-case and worst-case scenario when it comes to determining the cost of construction work. By examining each stage of the project lifecycle, project managers are able to better predict the outcome of a proposed construction project.
What-if scenario analysis improves project management by evaluating possible outcomes and helping your business make more informed decisions and actions. The goal of doing so is to reduce uncertainty or better prepare your business when it needs to respond to different situations. With advanced project forecasting, your business should have a better grasp on the simple and complex aspects to expect with your upcoming projects.
For example, there may be a scenario where a construction business is bidding on road construction. They have street measurements but may want to present the customer with a choice of materials. A flexible construction estimating program helps you create two different scenarios that show the cost of each, not just labor and materials, but also lifetime maintenance.
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In another scenario, remodeling a kitchen, the ability to quickly swap out different cabinet styles, countertops, appliances, etc. — without redoing the entire bid — allows the customer to quickly adapt to changing demands. .
Keeping records of your historical cost data can save time in preparing new estimates for similar work. These past estimates can accurately predict the cost of your project as long as the cost of supplies and labor do not fluctuate too much.
Cost estimators can turn to regularly published construction cost data for comparative cost analysis. This includes vendor data catalogs, periodicals, commercial cost reference manuals, and digests of actual project costs. Alternatively, your business can look at your own historical efforts to determine estimates. This comes in handy when working for the same client or doing similar construction jobs repeatedly.
Construction estimating software includes a computerized database of past estimates and bids. The most basic options are built in historical databases that allow you to reference quantities, costs, personnel and machine productivity data from previous projects. A more advanced option can offer capabilities like Earned Value Analysis (EVA), which can measure a project’s progress at any given time and better forecast final costs as you move through project statuses.
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Both construction and production projects can be priced through process costing or job costing. Process costing allocates costs to each step involved in a production plan based on historical data. Job costing breaks down the costs of specific labor, materials, equipment, and required subcontractors and their associated calculated costs.
Process costing works best in industries with more uniform costs, but job costing is more accurate because it uses more historical data and less guesswork. This is why job costing is so important in the world of construction estimating.
Dedicated job costing software helps save time on job-costing calculations done through manual processes like spreadsheets. Most estimating software is also compatible with job costing processes and helps your business accurately price jobs, submit timely estimates, calculate realistic profit margins and track costs in real time.
A good estimating program gives you an analytical foundation for understanding your costs in different areas within the job. Breaking down estimates and costs by sub-projects, physical areas, or other organizational units provides information to understand which work elements drive the overall project’s profit or loss.
Construction Software Features, Types And Stages
To identify payback, you may need to break down costs to track the resulting revenue. For example, if you’re a builder looking to lease your own space, it’s often imperative to set built-in rates based on an understanding of what you need to recover per unit cost. There is a need to track overall project costs by building or by unit.
Good construction estimating software can help you create any type of estimate you need. Most come with templates that auto-fill with your company and your client’s information. These templates usually differ depending on the type of work you are doing, such as a new home cost estimate, general construction estimate, remodeling estimate, and more.
What determines the information put on the estimate? There are four main types of construction estimates, and which one is used usually depends on the stage of the project.
Electricians, plumbers, many manufacturers, builders and HVAC companies all deal with estimating on a daily basis. However, some aspects of the estimation process may be different in each environment. A program written with your industry in mind can help shorten the learning curve for your company’s estimated software users.
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QuickBooks Online has been used successfully by thousands of construction companies. While not industry-specific construction management software, the solution handles the accounting required of most construction businesses. This includes managing job costs, tracking time and costs for projects, and running appropriate reports at the job/project level.
Intuit, the developer of QuickBooks, does not offer a dedicated construction estimating tool. However, QuickBooks solutions have the ability to generate estimates as part of their overall accounting package. Estimates created in QuickBooks can be used to create a bid, proposal, or quote. These can then be converted into a sales order or invoice. Creating an estimate is part of the normal A/R workflow in QuickBooks.
Given QuickBooks’ popularity, there are several top-notch construction estimating software options that integrate with QuickBooks — allowing you to keep the solution as your primary accounting software but gain the estimating capabilities your business demands. Some options recommended by QuickBooks itself include: What estimating tool you’re using, or what the estimating process looks like in your company, can help you.
You can collaborate with other teams, link processes, control your costs and approve estimates, all from a single source of truth.
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Whether you work with bill of materials, bill of quantities,
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